Frank A. Shepherd is the President of the Florida Legal Foundation. Mr. Shepherd is a former appellate court judge with more than 50 years of experience in the legal profession. There is nary an area of legal practice in the State of Florida in which he has not been involved, whether it be commercial, product liability, insurance coverage, class actions, private property rights, land use, municipal law, or state and federal constitutional issues. He has litigated at all levels of the courts of this state from the Florida state trial and appellate courts to the federal district courts and United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

 

For more than 13 years from 2003 to 2017, Mr. Shepherd served on the Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal, rising to the level of Chief Judge during the course of his service. Judge Shepherd wrote more than 500 signed opinions in all areas of the law, civil and criminal, including areas in which the Florida Legal Foundation exists to participate. Before that, he served as the Senior Attorney in charge of the Florida Office of Pacific Legal Foundation, the oldest public interest law firm of its type in the United States.

 

Mr. Shepherd is also a life-long Floridian. After graduating from the University of Florida, obtaining a graduate degree from the University of Massachusetts, and a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, Mr. Shepherd engaged in the private practice of law in Miami, Florida for more than 19 years at the same law firm. His “bosses” during those nearly two decades were practicing lawyers who served in World War II in Patton’s Army or the Army Air Corps dropping bombs over Germany – members of what has more recently been called “The Greatest Generation.” The values inculcated in Mr. Shepherd during those years – hard-work, integrity, and fearlessness in advocating for a client’s interest, even if that interest was unpopular—form much of the core and inspiration that has guided him through his personal and professional life.